How Musicals Work II

Still reading.

Some further thoughts on the section "Why Do Characters Sing?" (p.251). This, it seems to me, is crucial and probably deserves a chapter on its own.

Mr. Wooldford identifies the main reason:

"There is a cliche that the characters sing when the emotional pitch reaches a level at which speaking is no longer appropriate"

But:

"This is only true of some emotional situations...The actual reasons why characters sing are the most clearly defined by the theatrical language the writer is using. Your characters can sing only the most rapturous emotions, or the most mundane banalities, but as long as it is consistent with the theatrical language of the piece, then the audience will accept it."

Not sure. Except for the most modern, experimental, serialist, plinkety-plonk stuff, music is inherently emotional. More than anything else, music makes us feel feelings. So in a musical there must always be enough emotion in the drama to make the characters sing. The words may be banal but the song shouldn't.

My favourite example is from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Coy romancers, Finch and Rosemary, meet at the office lifts (aka elevators) and exchange small talk ("It's Been a Long Day") whilst Smitty translates their thoughts for the benefit of the audience:

Smitty: Now she's thinking
Rosemary: I wonder if we take the same bus?
Smitty: And he's thinking:
Finch: There could be quite a thing between us.
Smitty: Now she's thinking:
Rosemary: He really is a dear.
Smitty: And he's thinking:
Finch: But what of my career?
Smitty: And she says:
Rosemary: (yawning) Ah.
Smitty: And he says:
Finch: Huh?
Well, it's been a long day.
All: Well, it's been a long
Been a long, been a long,
Been a long day

You really can't get more banal than a yawn followed by a "huh?". But even if we didn't have Smitty, the sheer fact that the whole thing is sung, with the musical to-and-fro gradually shortening and rising in pitch, tells us that something more is going on. Something emotional.

This question about why characters sing is also one of the major problems for sung-through musicals. If everything is sung, at some point the characters inevitably end up singing trivialities. Woolford points to the critic who complained that the characters in the through-sung musical Aspects of Love spend a chunk of their time singing their drink orders. If I'm not mistaken that critic was Mark Steyn who also wondered if South Pacific's "Some Enchanted Evening" would have been half as successful if it turned up later in the show as "Would You Like a Biscuit?", which is effectively what happens to the big tunes in Aspects of Love. For my money, Aspects one of the greatest book musicals never made; strong story, great score but hamstrung by drink orders and the sung-through format.

The broader point is that if you are going to have continuous singing, then the music must distinguish between the emotional highs and lows (in a similar way that classical opera uses recitative). That's because when you have music, you have emotion. So when you have an emotional low in a musical, it's probably best not to sing at all.